"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." –Arundhati Roy

I don’t ever think of animals without thinking about their level of conscious or how they communicate. Animals are sentient beings. They have thoughts and feelings. If we can understand them, we can commune with another kind of conscious being.

And i never heard of this before..have only seen skateboarders do something similar :

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." –Arundhati Roy

You have to have immense agility and good strength to do this. My kids love this. I am going gray really fast....

I can't imagine

Tell them when they get old they will need hip replacements, knee replacements, shoulder replacements......my soon to be son in law was a skateboarder...he lived with pain for many many years after...and finally just had a hip replacement...

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." –Arundhati Roy

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." –Arundhati Roy

What would you suggest to start with for a 10 yr old who is insanely obsessed with learning how to parkour???

No one does this near where we are...

Gymnastics, as a structured approach to all the parkour skills with (hopefully) some attention to safety?

Kim

Sorry, I never noticed this thread was active!

This is... not the best idea. We get gymnastic coaches a lot that think they can teach parkour, but all their techniques are designed to work on a CUSHIONED, SPRING-LOADED floor. A lot of gymnastic techniques--rolling, blocking, etc.--are positively DANGEROUS on concrete.

If you live in a major city in the US, there are probably parkour gyms these days, although we're starting to move away from gyms. The European approach is to just use parks and public spaces. In any case, reaching out to the local parkour community is often the best idea. If there are no parkour gyms in the area, our tendency is to try to use the same space as gymnasts, just in off-hours, if they'll cooperate with us.

You have to have immense agility and good strength to do this. My kids love this. I am going gray really fast....

I can't imagine

Tell them when they get old they will need hip replacements, knee replacements, shoulder replacements......my soon to be son in law was a skateboarder...he lived with pain for many many years after...and finally just had a hip replacement...

I started when I was 19, and I'm 32 now. The founders, just about a decade or so older than me, all remain fairly healthy. I have some knee issues when I hike long distances, but not when I do parkour. And we never do anything dangerous, never anything we know we can't make, and train the vast majority of our time at ground-level. In general, I think parkour is among the -safest- sporting disciplines that someone can participate in... any injury incurred is generally your own fault--doing something you know we don't encourage, and that you weren't sure if you could do in the first place--and most of the time, fear keeps you from doing anything dangerous.

What ends up happening is that doing very small, very easy, very simple movements across the environment, you over years and years develop the capacity to move the human body in ways that most people consider to be 'superhuman', but like the siddhis accessed through meditation, these are very mundane abilities, a logical consequence of the training, and not something to fear.

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget." –Arundhati Roy